


Guard Your Rest

by Tonko



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 00:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17694302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonko/pseuds/Tonko
Summary: Thancred won't sleep. He won't.





	Guard Your Rest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NekoAisu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/gifts).



> My first go at the Chocolate Box exchange! I enjoyed writing this (always wanted a little more comfort for poor Thancred), and though I couldn't get more of my recipient's particular likes in, I hope it's still okay!
> 
> Spoilers here for end of 3.55/SB content, though it's set just after 2.0.

Thancred took a breath as he pushed open the door to the Waking Sands and held it as he nodded with a quirk of his mouth at Tataru. The concentration needed to keep from exhaling provided enough focus for him to move without rushing for the stairs, the door below, and the debatable sanctuary of the Waking Sands. Head filled with sand, eyes likewise sore and dry… his limbs felt sluggish enough now that rushing would be ill-advised anyway. 

Tataru smiled at him with the familiar tinge of concern she was far less able to hide than some of the other Scions, and it was an effort to not clench his jaw. 

But she returned to poring over some ledger or other and he carried on past her with a passable amble, relieved to escape the encroaching chill of a desert evening, and the ever more grating sound of the late crowds and merchants hawking their wares to all passersby under the looming statue of Lord Lolorito. 

He took the steps as carefully as he could while still trying to make it seem like a loose, easy descent, and entered the Sands.

Everything gnawed worse at his temper of late, so easily was he provoked to a downswing of his mood, to having to bite down on snapped replies, to irrational thickening in his throat and prickling eyes brought on by seemingly nothing at all.

The reason was hardly a mystery, but knowing did little to help. 

Lahabrea had been expelled weeks ago. Their implacably persistent hero had done it, the final triumph after laying waste to the Praetorium, giving them all a moment to breathe… though in her case, only until some appeal from the Adders had required her to face down Garuda once more.

Her eager reaction to "pray, investigate this new danger for us" had only ever been to pursue it to its often violent end, and that exhilarated appetite for it had sent her off, again.

The other Scions, meanwhile, _were_ here, back at what was near enough to home for most of them. For them, and even still for him, brought back into the fold with nothing worse than varyingly open or hidden compassion from his fellows.

Mostly. 

There'd been Arenvald cuffing and growling at a newer recruit for making a muttered suspicious comment, which had stung badly even as he'd laughed it off. _My thanks, Arenvald, but one could hardly blame him._

Arenvald's abashed flush at the rebuke had provoked some guilt as well; Arenvald had nearly passed out from his Echo's reaction after Thancred had first seen him on returning here, and had since staunchly defended against any doubt cast his way. 

It was reassuring to have those who could so honestly vouch for him. He wasn't certain he'd have vouched for himself, the state he was in now.

He still thanked the Twelve for every motion and sound he made of his own accord. Yet… too often he still felt as though he was not inhabiting his own skin, each time he failed to easily flirt or quip, each time some hesitation and his companions give him that godsforsaken look of _understanding._

The exhaustion was not helping any of that improve, either.

At least his old habits were in there somewhere… if only they'd stop being so slippery to keep a grip on. Perhaps he'd have better luck convincing Minfilia of his fitness for his previous type of mission, if they returned properly. But even he knew he was not at all fit for much, as he was now. 

The presence of others had always been fuel to him; charismatic interactions had been a useful tool for acquiring information, and, let it not be ignored, a great deal of fun. Now it wore on him so quickly… 

The young waitress at the eatery this afternoon had been easy to flirt with, though, he had gone there for some hours of food and quiet flirting, drinking and eavesdropping, and even found himself able to pull it off. 

He was fit for _that_ sort of task, at least, except when fatigue truly caught up with him, as now, when the chatter of patrons suddenly grated on him like sandpaper on sunburn.

He pushed the heel of one hand across his forehead. It _had_ been a good day. There was no call to let frayed nerves end it badly.

Tired… He was simply... tired.

The Ascian was _gone_. They'd told him, and repeated it. Anything left behind was memory, and nothing more. Urianger had suffered raising his goggles to grasp Thancred's chin and examine him nearly nose to nose, one of his oldest tomes open to an arcane geometry Thancred had felt twisting at him even as merely an illustration on a page. Papalymo had stood by, narrow-eyed, taken his own turn at pushing this or that spell through him. Seeking, finding nothing. The Seedseer herself of Gridania had been prevailed upon, back at Revenant's Toll, to cast her senses over him and confirm he was once again only himself. 

Memory of the Ascian remained.

_Nothing more._

Except he had soon come to understand that Lahabrea needed _nothing more_ than memory to haunt him. The impotent fury of watching through his own eyes, powerless, listening to his own voice speak while another jeered at him within. It carried on, in his dreams, it all returned, just as it had been, or new, terrible iterations, clear as when it had been real. 

He came to a stop in the hallway. He shook himself, made his feet keep moving, but despite his fatigue, not towards his bed. Never that, it only begged for more misery.

Sleep had to be as brief as he could make it, so he had ways to keep it at bay. Tea. Training. Stimulating conversation, for as long as he could tolerate any of it, until he couldn't.

He would fall asleep, despite it all, mid-meetings or in the library.

If he'd half stirred occasionally, too utterly drained to resist, as Urianger or Lyse--or _Yda_ (oh seven hells, even as he was, at least he hadn't so far erred aloud on that front) --carried him to bed… well, for all they tried to encourage him to rest, at least they never brought that up.

He still attempted to avoid that embarrassment, though, instead trying to make do with just the briefest naps, upright on a bench, reluctantly succumbing to a grey, fitful doze that clung stickily and pulled him under, until he jerked awake to chilly, ill-rested lethargy. 

The others thought he could not sleep, until exhaustion took him. He did not think any quite understood that he would not.

The twisted echoed visions of what he had done repeated endlessly, his own voice foreign, his own body someone else's... 

Fit for duty… he snorted. 

Off towards the Solar he heard peals of laughter from Ly--Yda, _Yda_ , confound it all--and Minfilia's quietly amused murmur. 

The sound eased his mood some--at least it wasn't Alphinaud's droning on. He was offered a terse greeting from the guard, stolidly guarding her post at the start of this evening shift, and offered her his usual respectful nod, as ever a hair slower than quite properly formal, giving a little wink. He enjoyed seeing the corners of her mouth turn up for just a moment in a flicker of familiar amusement.

_\--spin tales, words of honey and effortless charm--easy as breathing--_

He'd get it back properly. Surely, he would. A question of practice, nothing more.

He kept himself moving naturally despite the weight of his eyelids, his limbs, and his mind, strolling onward, though not towards the evening bustle of the large room where most Scions took their meals. 

Right now loud laughter erupted into the hall, Arenvald's booming mirth loudest among them, and Thancred went the opposite way, towards the wing that held the Sands' infirmary, the sleeping quarters, and the inner library. It contained the more valuable shelves, crates and chests of volumes that the Scions had collected, and a great deal more quiet as well. 

Papalymo was there, standing on a chair to sort through a stack of volumes, and glanced up with a narrow-eyed nod as he passed. "You look terrible," Papalymo said, the disapproval in his voice belying the warm worry in his eyes.

"Indeed. Thy bed wanteth for an occupant." Urianger spoke softly but pointedly, regarding him briefly from where he was examining in a pair of documents, a glass to magnify the text in his hand and an additional sheet on the side with tight, neat notes filling it halfway. 

"I have no need of mothering," Thancred snapped, irritation spilling out. Here, that was safe, they would not take real offense. That was itself a respite, even if the gritty exhaustion that ground at him did not abate. 

Papalymo tutted, the noise as familiar as his worry. Their concern and this rebuffing of it was a now-routine occurrence. "Do as you will," he said, pretending a dismissive air.

Thancred did just that, not acknowledging the sidelong regard kept on him as Papalymo did not immediately resume sorting through the books. He settled on a bench by the wall, brought out his whetstone and his cloth, and arranged his knives with overly deliberate care on the small table beside him. 

It was make-work; never had his knives been as keen and polished as these past days. Which was just as well, as he lacked the dexterity to do it properly at the moment.

He sighed at the blades, blinked slowly at the gleaming metal, felt the hardness of the stone when he tightened his fingers. His head nodded down--he jerked it weakly up again. He took a new focus, on the quiet rustle of pages and the scratch of a deft pen. 

This, here, was where he wanted to be, truly. Not alone, nor surrounded. Quiet. Here he could sit, cling to the ingrained trancelike waiting state he'd learned as a cutpurse orphan in Limsa, ensuring nothing more than catnaps could claim him.

It would do.

A while later, a quiet murmur of a greeting to Papalymo alerted him. The sound of the door opening had passed him by, but--her voice! 

Clear as a bell through silent air, a calm spreading immediately despite the ungainly jolt of his surprise. 

Her voice...

The voice of his salvation, back then. And in a way now, for if Lahabrea had sunken irrevocably into his memory as something to fear, so had she as the force that had banished him. Her bellow in some glowing space in his mind's eye, and hers; some unknowable between-place where their minds had met, a blur of her implacable willpower and the ripping expulsion of the Ascian from him with the roar of many voices, hers loudest of all. 

He hadn't understood, at first, not his mind, nor his body. Then it had been scraps of sound and sensation, heat and smoke, hollow pain through limbs that were too heavy to move, a concussion of air and heat and all of it on fire when he'd managed to open his eyes a moment. 

He'd been lifted, clung with his mind to the fierce sound of her voice as he was slung across hard metal, words lost in the cacophony of a collapsing structure and the anvil-strike noise of sprinting magitek armour.

Now her weapon was on her back, the dust of travel on her gear. There was a bruise across her cheek, raw red of fresh contusions down along one side. Perhaps from Garuda, or just as likely to be the result of some detour to aid another, and she ignored it like it was not there. 

As she came near, her face softened with the concern that had marred her expression the most of any of the others, ever since the explosive end to the attack on the Castrum.

As always, part of him hackled up with indignation at the concern, but the rest of him was too glad for her return to let pride sour it.

"You look terrible," she told him fondly, so he crossed his arms with pretended offense and earned a laugh that splashed over him and smoothed harsh edges all away.

"You wound me, good lady," he told her, felt himself smile more broadly than he had since she'd gone.

And there was that laugh again, for him. 

What seemed like an age ago, in that time before his obsession had opened the opportunity for the invasion of his mind, there had been flirtations. All harmless and amusing, and Thancred had relished, as he did with all the ladies receptive to him, the brightness in her eyes and her laughter at his words.

Lahabrea had not sustained that habit, not with her nor many others. They'd thought him overly focused on his admittedly important work, and he'd watched her draw away to a more distant association, anything else left aside, as if the fun had simply and understandably cooled with the weight of their grand task.

Now…?

A quiet throat-clearing. "Dost thou bring any news of Garuda, then?" Urianger's request made them both look over. 

"Oh, indeed," she said immediately.

Always so poised to help. Big things and small. Thancred watched, now blessedly free of any irritation. He leaned back, settled to listen in on her account of the battle, the beastmen, and the Adders' future plans. He put aside the dagger he'd made ready to sharpen, let her report wash over him, the words half-heard, the voice all he needed for just a little peace.

***

"And with this new source of crystals cut off, they--"

Papalymo cleared his throat, rather more noisily than Urianger had earlier.

The other two both looked at him, and he raised an eyebrow and tilted his head at Thancred, chin on his chest, arms loose, finally and mercifully, asleep.

Urianger put down his pen and half rose to stare. "At last." His murmur was rather fervent. 

"He really does look awful. He looks ill." She spoke just above a whisper; here their most intrepid scion's gaze had turned as soft as Papalymo had ever seen it, and her voice was troubled.

"Sleep eludeth him greatly of late. Or he it," Urianger told her, his mouth flattening. "His memories trouble his rest."

"After Lahabrea…" her brows drew together and her gaze grew direly cold for an instant.

"Indeed." Papalymo slid off the chair to draw near enough to speak quietly to them. "But you may find it of interest…" he looked at her evenly. "This is the easiest he's ever given in to rest."

A pause, then--"You think I--?" She regarded Thancred, looking for a moment altogether more bashful than someone who had defeated Gaius van Baelsar really ought to.

"I suspect this happening so easily upon your return is more than mere correlation, hm?" Papalymo suggested. 

"Wouldst thou stay nearby?" Urianger asked.

She glanced at him only briefly, her gaze already drawn back to Thancred's awkward slump, the care in it clear and true. Thancred's flirtations, stilted as they were now while he recovered, curtailed as they had been during his possession, had once been deftly returned, after all.

"Of course I will," she said, the words spoken nearly absently, and while Papalymo would not count his Yda nor dear young Lyse as a perfect sample of the emotional spectrum of all young women, nor could his few years of association with them be enough to have provided full insight into such things… still, he thought he may sense something familiar there in her gaze on Thancred. "Perhaps I could… read to him," she suggested. 

Indeed--in fact, Papalymo had the very thing. "Quite," he agreed, and motioned for her to wait as he went to fetch a particular book.

Meanwhile, Urianger rose, went to move Thancred from the bench without waking him, something he'd become quite adept at in recent days. He retrieved the weapon still loosely gripped and set it aside, lifted him with the ease learned from practice.

Papalymo found the cheaply bound volume of romantic adventure tales he'd tossed aside earlier. It had been buried in among the books he'd been sorting through (Urianger had professed a strained ignorance of its provenance--Papalymo had rolled his eyes and allowed him the lie), but for this purpose perhaps it could in fact be of use. 

More so than dusty Gelmorran texts or updated arcanist equations, at any rate.

He brought it to her as Urianger stood up, Thancred boneless in his arms. That man's charisma could--or had been able to, and would again, for Papalymo declined to consider otherwise--fill a room, but now… 

He still looked so drawn, ill-fed, darkly smudged under his eyes. But loose and asleep there was a calm so much more reassuring than the facade he kept propping up for them all. 

"Rest thee well, my friend," he heard Urianger murmur as he carried him to his bed, their bravest of warriors hovering worriedly at his elbow, that ridiculous book dangling from her hand. 

Papalymo watched them go and sighed, sat heavily on the bench and pressed at his temples, reliving again the gutted feeling of _we've lost another_ , as it was still not entirely eased given Thancred's sorry state.

Ah, but _she_ was back. And what she put her mind to had only the best chances of success. That was hope. 

***

It was dark, quiet… 

Thancred half-woke, vaguely perplexed, but warm and comfortable and so he did not rouse enough to care, only blinked sleepily at low candlelight and the familiar walls of his own room, the soft sensation under him of his own bed.

Beside him on a chair, a book open and askew on her lap, she was there… she sat, and dozed, the faintest of snores audible with each breath. 

Oh… alright.

He closed his eyes again, and dreamed of nothing at all.


End file.
